Archive for the ‘Meat-packing District’ Category

A big part of the New York’s beauty are the rows and rows of brownstones, with classic 19th century features such as a high front stoop and enormous parlor floor windows.

But every so often you come across a modernized version of the iconic city residence. The futuristic redesign or unique facade can be creative and impressive . . . or leave you wondering what the designers were thinking.

That’s the case with this former brownstone on Greenwich Street east of Gansevoort Street, with a front made of glass and what looks like a sheet of steel stretching down the facade. It’s a novel way to block out the sun.

Around the corner on Horatio and Greenwich Streets is this three-story residence.

The brick gives it a 19th century feel, but the cutouts on the second and third floor are an interesting touch.

Then there’s this modernized home on West 13th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, near where West Fourth Street ends.

In its earlier life, it was a three-story walk-up, not a brownstone, as this 1929 photo from the New York Public Library reveals (it’s taken the place of the first building on the left).

Now it’s very New York in the 21st century, sleek and trendy . . . and fittingly with a blow-dry bar right downstairs.

They were among the “160 thriving meat-related businesses operating between 18th and Bank Streets,” in 1974, this illuminating 1997 New York cover story on the beginnings of Meatpacking gentrification explains.

The building that once stood here on the corner of Greenwich and Vestry Streets in Tribeca, below, doesn’t look fancy. It was probably just a regular walk-up with six or eight apartments in what had been a neighborhood of light industry for most of the 20th century.

But it sure left a formidable impression.

I love the sloping roof on this long-gone building on Washington Place in the Meatpacking District, below. Was it a garage? Warehouse? Meat packager?

I have no idea when it went down, but it’s being obliterated forever in favor of another restaurant or boutique or luxury hotel.

On 31st Street near Fifth Avenue is the imprint of a sturdy chimney and a roof on a slight incline. A coat of paint almost covers most of it up, but a sliver remains of what was once someone’s home.

The best thing about this bulldozed building on East 29th Street? The phantom smoke coming out of the pattern of a chimney!

Contemporary New York boasts of its artisanal gourmet chocolatiers and confectioners.

But decades ago, the city was home to big factories pumping out some of the cheap sweets that are iconic old-school brands today.

Like Tootsie Rolls. Invented by a Brooklyn candy maker in 1896 and named after his daughter, these chewy candies used to be produced by the Sweets Company of America in a factory at 325-329 West Broadway.

That factory has sat empty for years, but as you can see from the photo, a developer has big plans: it’s set to become luxury condos called the Chocolate Factory, reports Curbed.

Looks like the same fate is in store for the former Life Savers factory at Eleventh Avenue and 20th Street.

Take a stroll through Chelsea Market, at Ninth Avenue and 15th Street, and you’re constantly reminded that this high-end foodie heaven was once part of the factory complex owned by the National Biscuit Company, or Nabisco, since the late 19th century.

Where did rock stars, artists, Wall Street traders, models, and the people who hung around them in mid-1980s Manhattan go to mingle?

Nell’s, a former electronics store-turned-nightclub on West 14th Street near Eighth Avenue. It was supposed to be a throwback of sorts, a retreat from the Studio 54 kind of excess.

The space cultivated the look of an elegant, Victorian gentleman’s club—one with a velvet rope, tough door policy, and lines stretching around the block.

This ad, which ran in the November 1993 issue of Interview gives a quick look at some of the regulars (Quentin Crisp? Salmon Rushdie?). By the early 1990s, however, Nell’s had lost some of its cachet, reports a 1994 New York Times article.

Nell’s closed in 2004, but will always be remembered as a 1980s hangout. Even Patrick Bateman, Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, was a regular.